DESERT SCENERY. 183 the day I jogged along patiently beside the baggage camels, and at sunset halted for the night. A divan on the sand, and a well-filled pipe, gave me patience while dinner was preparing, and afterwards I made the necessary entries in my journal. I had no need to court sleep, after being rocked all day on the dromedary.

At the close of the third day, we encamped opposite a mountain which Eyoub called Djebel Khattab (the Mountain of Wood). The Bohr Khattab, a river of sand, similar to the Bahr bela Ma, and probably a branch of it, crossed our path. I here discovered that the water-skins I had hired from Shekh Abou-Mohammed were leaky, and that our eight skins were already reduced to four, while the Arabs had entirely exhausted their supply. This rendered strict economy necessary, as there was but a single well on the road. Until noon the next day we journeyed over a vast plain of sand, interrupted by low reefs of black rock. To the south-east it stretched unbroken to the sky, and looking in that direction, I saw two hemispheres of yellow and blue, sparkling all over with light and heat, so that the eye winked to behold them.

The colocynth (called by the Arabs murrar), grew in many places in the dry, hot sand. The fruit resembles a melon, and is so intensely bitter that no animal will eat it. I made breakfast under the lee of an isolated rock, crowned with a beacon of camel-bones. We here met three Ababdehs, armed with long spears, on their way to Korosko. Soon after mid day the plain was broken by low ranges of hills, and we saw in front and to the east of us many blue mountain-chains. Our road approached one of them — a range, several miles in length, the highest peak of which reached an altitude of a thousand